A light against the storm

The gobbet of bloody phlegm whipped perpendicular, caught in a probing tendril of the approaching maelstrom.

“A storm? Here?” the voice mocked her cultivated austerity.

She turned from balcony and the darkening sky. The fat little man on the chair was grimacing in his amusement.

“It has been known.”

She let the sentence hang in the air unqualified, a veil to obscure the smirking interloper from her mind's sight.About her scattered arcana littered the floor. Shattered phials bled onto the grubby mosaic, accidental chemistries cleaning away the filth.

“So we're allies then, how entertaining!”

“You, importunate cretin, are to be my ally. The relationship is not reciprocal.”

“Ha! Well put!”

The Haemonculus swallowed her rage, it was misplaced anyway. If her crescendo was ill timed all her patience would be wasted. She returned to her aerie, ignored the obscene figure bound behind her, kept watch.

Her peculiar company of Commorraghan exiles had little choice but to disguise their activities. But this? Madness surely. Despite her protests their loose democracy had decided. And now it seemed the damnable skyboarders that had pushed this agenda were her final hope; thrill-seekers riding the winds, only they would be so foolish to remain this late.

How she had become separated seemed irrelevant. All that mattered was that her beacon should burn brighter than all the pain and suffering that was even now descending upon the insignificant frontier planet. Those locals that could had fled. There had been massed suicides. Still, enough remained to feel a palpable bow wave of terror emanating from the heart of the storm, the eye, where the first caresses of Hive fleet Tempest were touching down. Despite its idiocy; raiding on the fringes of a hive fleet. It was, at least, noteworthy.

A sudden glint.

“At last” she sighed and smiled cruelty.

Even through his madness the porcine Governor understood, now whimpered whence he laughed. Outside her minaret a cacophony of agony raged against her, but it was a million voices with no score.